Buying a Used Schneider Truck

8 or 9 hundred thousand on a good owner op truck is better than half million mile fleet truck .

 

I'll also back up my previous statements with this .
The boss offered me my 2013 Cummins powered cascadia mid roof for wholesale price in sept of 2017 34k ..540k on the clock .
Since new it had 30k drains and 15k greases and had a pos electric apu .
Paid it off in 2 years but in that time .
Complete inframe overhaul .
New clutch.
New carrier apu .
Along with everything else you would do on a truck in this mileage range .
894k on it and its been gone thru bumper to bumper, taken care of and looks near new .
Overhaul will be paid off in April and good for another 500k at least.
Butttttt....this truck is worth way more to me than it is anybody else and its a retirement truck now .
I'd pass on fleet trucks if you dont have a deep checkbook .

 

Oh and I forgot about another 15k in after treatment issues spread out over a couple years until had it deleted 6 months ago for 4500.00 .

 

Go for it, your chariot awaits you...

 

Don't lump all fleet trucks together. Mine was a fleet truck, I was familiar with the company that had it, their maintenance schedule, and I got it cheap ($25k for a 3 year old 2016 Volvo with 520k) I got the maintenance and repair records from new, so can you, and I've had no major repairs. I did replace the entire emission system, over a period of about 6 months, including injectors, DPF, EGR, and SCR, which cost about $20k total, but I was making money and was able to pay the bill as each portion was done. Truck will be paid for in under 8 months. Any truck is a piece of machinery, and might break down, I don't care who previously owned it.
When looking and researching, a couple things I learned;
Get pre-emission if possible.
If not, get newer than 2014.
Emission system will need serviced/replaced around 4-500k.
It's the sensors that will give you the most grief.
I was also looking at a ex Schneider truck, but it had sat for over a year, and I knew sitting causes other troubles.

 

The thought of buying a fleet truck from any big fleet should send you into night terrors

 

I give up .

 

No, and never have.

 

Last August I was talking with OPs about my plan to get home, when he mentioned that a driver on the account texted him that he had a bad steer tire. This is at 1800 on a Friday, about 2 hours after the 'driver' went home for the day. I walked over to his truck and the right steer tire is about 2/32, the left about 4/32 and the drives ranged between 3 and 6/32s. I told OPs that since I didn't have time to get all the way home that night, I would stay at the plant and take the other driver's truck to Goodyear in the morning, then bob tail home. When I pretripped in the morning, the truck was a gallon low on oil and had 3 emissions related codes. I run to Goodyear and get 10 tires, then to Freightliner for the codes and a gallon of oil. I saw the AVI was due in October and I tried to get the PM/AVI done and was told no. So I took the truck back to the plant, then got in my truck and bobtailed home.

Fast forward to two week ago, when I was putting my trainee into his first tractor. He had a choice of two, one of which was the truck I dealt with in August and the other was a "smoker truck". We looked at the "smoker truck" first, and my guy objected to the smoke smell, so we moved on to the other truck. In the 4 months since I'd dealt with it, the truck had gone thru a gallon of oil and 2 gallons of coolant, the AVI and the PM wasn't done. Both trucks showed signs of oil coming thru the heads/injectors (a common dd15 issue).

Schneider policy is that PMs get done every 75,000 miles, but that's no guarantee that they actually get done in that time frame. Nor is there a reasonalbe belief that the driver(s) were diligent about reporting problems and ensuring those problems were dealt with.

TLDR - if you buy a fleet truck with no independent inspection and oil analysis, be prepared for imminent failure.